MINICARS: A beginner’s guide to JNC Legos, Part 02

With the popularity of Legos showing no signs of slowing, it’s a good time to get into building custom JNCs out of these little Danish bricks. In Part 01 of our beginner’s guide, we took a look at some highly detailed, large-scale cars, some using hundreds of individual pieces. However, there’s an entire subculture that intentionally restricts the size of the cars, giving themselves an altogether different challenge.

Why would you artificially limit yourself when building a sleek, flowing body out of jagged plastic bricks is already incredibly tough? One answer can be found in the , which launched in 2015 with official licensing from actual automakers such as Ferrari, Porsche, Audi, and Ford. So far, there have been no Japanese ones, but that hasn’t stopped custom builders.

All of these kits have a set size, and as they have taken off many builders are emulating the style. One of our favorites is the UK’s , who created the brilliant Nissan Fairlady Z and Toyota 2000GT you see here in Speed Champions style. Elliott’s work has a great aesthetic and consistency to the official line.

Here are some more JNCs done in the style of Speed Champions, starting with a Datsun 240Z BRE (). As you can see, even a design as simple as the Z can be built a number of ways, leading to many different interpretations.

All of these are so-called 6-stud builds, a reference to the number of standard Lego “dots” that span the width of the the car. As you can imagine, the lower the “resolution” you have to work with, the harder it is to make an accurate depiction of the car, but that’s all part of the fun. But, you don’t have to adhere to the Speed Champions look. Here’s another favorite builder of ours, , who, true to his namesake, built a clever 6-stud AE86 and R35 GT-R NISMO. Below are some other brilliant 6-stud cars.

Nissan GT-R R35 NISMO by .

Toyota Van by .

Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 by .

Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60 by .

Mitsubishi Pajero by .

Datsun 280Z by .

Toyota HiAce 1979 by .

Suzuki Samurai by .

Mitsubishi Pajero by .

Suzuki Jimny by .

Toyota FJ Cruiser by .

Toyota HiLux N50 by .

Toyota Celica A60 by .

Honda Prelude, builder unknown.

Mitsubishi Delica Star Wagon by .

Toyota GT-One TS020 by .

Toyota Celica A20 by .

Datsun Fairlady Roadster by .

Nissan Skyline GTR Kenmeri by .

Nissan Skyline C10 Hakosuka, by .

Of course, there are certain styles of vehicle that lend themselves perfectly to Lego builds, and one of them is dekotora. Yes, legotora is a thing. Here’s a beautiful Dekotora by .

Dekotora by .

Dekotora by . Okay, so this one isn’t really a 6-stud build, but it’s radio controlled and too cool not to share.

The 6-stud builds are some of the quickest ways to get into Lego car building, since you don’t need very many pieces to start. All you need is a bit of imagination. In the next installment, we’ll see some custom builds that are even more limiting, and the creativity that springs as a result.